Treo 700w Updater with Direct Push Email Available

As they had promised, yesterday Palm and Verizon Wireless finally released the long awaited “Windows Mobile Messaging and Security Feature Pack” (AKU2 ROM) for Treo 700w which is included within their new Treo 700w Updater 1.10.

The updater includes the following enhancements:

• Includes Microsoft®'s Messaging and Security Feature Pack (MSFP) with Direct Push Technology for automatic wireless synchronization of email, calendar, contacts and, now, tasks
• Enhances email capabilities for more support of push email solutions, such as WirelessSync and GoodLink, and of synchronization capabilities, such as the ability to maintain an "always on" data connection after POP or IMAP email synchronization and the ability to auto-synchronize all email accounts based on user setting.
• Updated memory management
• Pictures and Videos enhancements
• New Wireless Manager provides an updated interface for turning wireless radios on and off on your 700w smartphone

Installation

After downloading the updater’s 35MB zip file to my laptop (no Mac installer available yet + you need your Treo 700w serial number) and unzipping it with PowerArchiver I encountered my first problem. 

Namely, when launching the Setup.exe it looks for another .msi file in the same extracted folder called “Palm® Treo™ 700w Updater” but mine was instead named “Palm TreoÖ 700w Updater” without the ‘®’ and ‘™’ which resulted in an error.  It took me a while to figure out that this was the issue and then found that using WinZip instead to unzip the files worked fine.  Since other Treonauts have already encountered the same difficulties I would suggest that Palm simply get rid of the ‘®’ and ‘™’ characters…

After completing the Setup.exe which takes only a few minutes a shortcut icon called ‘Treo 700w Updater’ will be placed on your desktop.  Double click this to begin the full installation which may take up to 30 minutes to complete (mine took 23mins) during which time you’ll simply see a Treo logo on your 700w for most of the time.

Once the update process is complete, a “The update completed successfully” message will appear on both your Treo and PC.  The updater window on your PC then states that “Once the update is complete, you must reactivate your phone by dialing *228 and then selecting option 1.”.  Even though your Treo may work fine after the update I would recommended that you still reactive it.

Next Palm’s online instructions point out that you need to perform a soft reset (by removing the battery cover and pushing the reset button with your stylus).  After your device has rebooted there is one final task which may again take up to 30 minutes to complete (mine took about 5mins).

You need to use the File Explorer program (images above) on your Treo 700w to remove all the zero KB .tmp files from the Windows\Temp folder (Press Menu > Edit > Select All then Menu again > Delete).  You also need to manually uninstall the chunky 70.70MB Palm Updater application from your Desktop PC with Add/Remove Programs when done.

I haven’t yet had the time to fully play with my updated Treo 700w nor test the Messaging and Security Feature Pack but current feedback from other Treonauts has been extremely positive on all fronts.  Overall, a terrific update particularly for Treonauts using MS Exchange Server 2003 – hopefully we’ll see a similar direct push email functionality in our future PalmOS Treo…

IMPORTANT UPDATE: Please note that Palm/Verizon have temporarily removed the updater from their website.  Apparently this is to resolve the issue that I and others encountered unzipping the updater files and nothing else.  There are no bugs of any other kind with the updater and those Treonauts who have already installed it do not need to do anything.  Palm plans to provide a revised updater again shortly.

Treonauts always push the limits…